sdyer@bbncca.ARPA (Steve Dyer) (11/03/83)
I just received the Spectrum Projects "Voice Pak", a voice synthesizer cartridge for the CoCo, based on the Votrax SC01 chip. For a retail price of $69.95, it's a very good value, especially since it comes with a fairly sophisticated, dictionary driven, text-to-speech translator accessible from BASIC. I found its rules are already quite acceptable for most words, and you can modify the "exception dictionary" if you prefer to tweak its pronunciations. On the minus side, it comes with no technical information on the chip, like where the I/O ports are, how to program it yourself, etc.--not even the source code for the translator. I have written to the owner of Spectrum Projects regarding this point. We'll see whether he's responsive. The Voice Pak can be used with disk systems if you have an expansion interface--I am using it with a disk and X-pad and the R/S Multi-Pak i/f without any problems. /Steve Dyer decvax!bbncca!sdyer